Over the Christmas holidays my family and I traveled to Florida to visit our daughter Heather who was employed at Walt Disney World.

As part of this trip we had scheduled a meeting at Disney's wedding planner to discuss plans for Heathers upcoming wedding. This meeting was scheduled for noon on January 3, 2008.

At 11;30AM while traveling to meet her mom and I at the wedding planner, and stopped at a traffic signal, Heather and her fiancee were involved in a ten car accident. Patrick , her fiancee survived but our Heather was killed instantly. She was 26 years old.

Although the investigation to the accident is ongoing it is laleged that the tractor trailer driver that caused this terrible tragedy was text messaging when the accident occurred.

My wife and I have started a letter writing campaign and petition drive here in Maryland to get our legislature to ban texting while driving. It is being called Heather's Law. Just yesterday the Maryland Senate passed a cell phone and text messaging ban while driving. It now goes to the Maryland House of Delegates and we are hopefull for a reversal of earlier decisions there.

Next we would like to see a similar federal ban so that we can save other families from feeling the pain and sorrow we now feel every day.

I urge everyone to write their Senators and Congressman to urge support for a Federal ban on using cell phones and text messaging while driving. With everyones help Heathers Law will be the law of the land

Sincerely,

Russell Hurd
Abingdon, Maryland

A few years ago I was working the phones for one of the Las Vegas public radio stations during pledge week. The phone worker next to me was taking a pledge that was suddenly interrupted by squealing tires, and then the phone went dead. We debated what to do with the pledge card since it wasn't quite finished. We held onto it. About 45 minutes later I answered the phone and it was the same guy who had called earlier. He confirmed that he was in a freeway accident and then completed his pledge. Dedicated listener?

Harvey

In early August of this year, a family of four was traveling north on I-405 through Kirkland, Washington. Their Toyota Corolla stalled in the right lane and began to slow significantly as they tried to make it to the shoulder. Before they could reach safety, they were struck from behind, at almost full speed, by a Ford Expedition. The Toyota exploded into flames upon impact.

Good Samaritans were able to extract the driver, but they had to watch helplessly as the driver's wife and two children burned to death. The man was airlifted to a hospital, but died a couple of weeks later.

The woman driving the Expedition was speeding AND talking on her cell phone. She suffered a broken arm.

Margaret

I work for a construction management firm, and the other day I received the following accident report...

"Please be advised that on October 18 at approximately 10:00 a.m., a woman walked onto one of our concrete trucks being directed by our flagman.

"The woman crossed the roadway while she was on her cell phone and a DO NOT WALK sign was flashing.

"She hit the chute of the concrete truck and fell down, at which point the flagman pulled her out of harm's way.

She was not seriously injured and refused medical attention."

Larry

A 28-year-old Indianapolis man was talking on his cell phone while driving and ran through a stop sign. A dump truck broad- sided his car, killing him instantly. Further police investigation showed that he was talking to the manager of a funeral home to make arrangements for his brother who had been killed the day before while he was driving and talking on his cell phone. The brother had run through a traffic light and a city bus broad sided him.

Angela

I was driving west on I-44. It was raining pretty heavily when I noticed an east-bound, 18-wheeler coming straight for me. He hit the median pretty hard, jack-knifed, and slammed into the rear of a semi-trailer just in front of me. When he struck the trailer in front of me, it straightened him out just enough so that he missed me by a comfortable foot or so. The debris from the two trucks hit my Cherokee so hard it spun me around two and one-half times. I finally came to rest backwards in a ditch.

The trooper that responded told me the driver had been traveling in excess of the speed limit and had lost control of the truck when he answered his cell phone.

Chris

I, like most people, feel that I am an above average driver. When I have occasionally talked on the phone while driving, it readily becomes apparent to me that I lose some situational awareness. It's almost like I have the automatic pilot on but, unfortunately, I don't have one in my car.

I am very good at multitasking, have fantastic reflexes and have developed exceptional situational awareness and hand-eye coordination. I was in the United States Air Force for 10 years and regularly flew within a couple feet of another aircraft going 500 mph. I presently am a commercial airline pilot and still use all of the skills I've developed over the years. Being able to manipulate a machine to make it do exactly what I want it to do is my livelihood. If I notice a serious degradation in my driving performance when I attempt to talk on a cell phone and drive, imagine what happens to your average Joe Blow

Randy